In a searching and powerful debut memoir, award-winning poet and literary translator Ani Gjika tells a different kind of origin story by writing about the ways a woman listens to her own body, intuition, and desire. Ani Gjika was born in Albania and came of age just after the fall of Communism, a time when everyone had a secret to keep and young women were afraid to walk down the street alone. When her family immigrates to America, Gjika finds herself...

"The Weight of Ghosts is a circling of grief following the death of the author's older son when he was twenty-one, a horror that was compounded by her younger son's drug use, the country's slow eruption as it dealt with its own brokenness, and reckoning the author had to do regarding her own story. The Weight of Ghosts is a lyrical reclaiming and an insistence by the author that she own the rights to her story, which is American flavored with an unreleasing...

"From the author of Happy Birthday or Whatever, an outright hilarious and heartfelt collection of personal essays about everything from underwear to musical theater. Annie Choi wants to tell you a few things: She hates musical theater. She thinks sandwiches are boring. She likes camping, except for the outdoors part. She daydreams about cannibalism. At fifteen, her father made her read the entire car manual before allowing her to sit in the driver's...

"In this moving true story, Kao Kalia Yang shares her experiences as a young Hmong refugee navigating life at home and at school. Having seen the poor treatment her parents received when making their best efforts at speaking English, she no longer speaks at school. Kalia feels as though a rock has become lodged in her throat, and it grows heavier each day. Although the narrative is somber, it is also infused with moments of beauty, love, and hope."--...